1.
What is/are
difference(s) between roots, affixes, stems and bases?
A.
According to
Francis Katamba
A root is the
irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it. It is
the part that is always present, possibly with some modification, in the
various manifestations of a lexeme. For example, walk is a root and it appears in the set of word-forms that
instantiate the lexeme WALK such as walk,
walks, walking and walked.
The only situation where this is not true is when suppletion takes place. In
that case, word-forms that represent the same morpheme do not share a common
root morpheme. Thus, although both the word-forms good and better realise
the lexeme GOOD, only good is
phonetically similar to GOOD.
An affix is a morpheme
which only occurs when attached to some other morpheme or morphemes such as a
root or stem or base. Obviously, by definition affixes are bound morphemes. No
word may contain only an affix standing on its own, like *-s or *-ed or *-al or
even a number of affixes strung together like *-al-s. There are three types of affixes. We will consider them
in turn.
a.
Prefixes
A prefix is an affix attached before a root or stem or base like re-, un- andin-. For
example: re-makeun-kindin-decent
re-read un-tidy in-accurate.
b.
Suffixes
A suffix is an affix attached after a root (or stem or base) like -Iy, -er, -ist,-s, -ing and -ed.For
example: kind-Iy wait-er book-s
walk-ed quick-Iy play-er mat-s
jump-ed.
c.
Infixes
An infix is an affix inserted into the root itself.This infix
undergoes place of articulation assimilation, Thus, the root-cub- meaning 'lie in, on or upon'
occurs without [m] before the [b] in somewords containing that root. Example:incubate,incubus, concubine
and succubus.But [m] is infixed
before that same root in some other words likeincumbent, succumb,
and decumbent.
The stem is that part
of a word that is in existence before any inflectional affixes have
been added. Inflection is discussed in section. For example:
Noun stem Plural
Cat -s
Worker -s
For the moment a few examples should suffice: In the
word-form cats, the plural
inflectional suffix -s is
attached to the simple stem cat, which
is a bare root, i.e. the irreducible core of the word. In workers the same inflectional -s suffix comes after a slightly more
complex stem consisting of the root work
plus the suffix -er which
is used to form nouns from verbs. Here work
is the root, but worker is
the stem to which -s is
attached.
A base is any unit
whatsoever to which affixes of any kind can be added. The affixes attached to a
base may be inflectional affixes selected for syntactic reasons or derivational
affixes which alter the meaning or grammatical category of the base. An unadorned
root like boy can be a base
since it can have attached to it inflectional affixes like -s to form the plural boys or derivational affixes like -ish to tum the noun boy into the adjective boyish. In other words, all roots are
bases. Bases are called stems only in the context of inflectional morphology. Example:
faith, faithful, booksho.
B.
According to Mark
Aronoff
A root is like a stem in constituting the core of the word to
which other pieces attach, but the term refers only to morphologically simple
units. For example, disagree is
the stem of disagreement,
because it is the base to which -ment
attaches, but agree is
the root. Taking disagree now, agree is both the stem to which dis- attaches and the root of the
entire word.
A
stem is a base unit to which another morphological piece is attached.
The stem can be simple, made up of only one part, or complex,
itself made up of more than one piece. Here it is best to consider consider a simple stem. Although it
consists historically of more than one part, most present-day speakers would
treat it as an unanalyzable form. We could also call consider the root.
2.
What do you
know about morphemes, morhps and allomorphs?
A.
According to
Francis Katamba
The morpheme is the smallest difference in the shape of a word that
correlates with the smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in
grammatical structure. Example: If we divided up the word fee [fi:]
(which contains just one morpheme) into, say, [f] and [i:], it would be
impossible to say what each of the sounds [f] and [i:] means by itself since
sounds in themselves do not have meaning.
The analysis of words into morphemes begins with the isolation of
morphs. A morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It
is a recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes). For
example:
a. I parked the car. e.
She parked the car.
b. We parkedthecar. f.
Sheparksthecar.
c. I park the car. g. We park the car.
d. He parks the car. h.
He parked the car.
Different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are grouped
together and they are called allomorphs of that morpheme. So, tu- and tware allomorphs of the 'first person plural' morpheme. (For
simplicity's sake, for our present purposes, we are regarding 'first person
plural' as a single unanalysable concept.) On the same grounds, /Id/, /d/ and /t/ Are grouped together as allomorphs of the past tense morpheme
in English. For example: parked
/Id/, cleaned /d/, missed/t/.
B.
According to
Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Fudeman
The term ‘morph’ is sometimesused to refer specifically to the
phonological realization of a morpheme.For example, the English past
tense morpheme that we spell –edhas
various morphs. It is realized as [t] after the voiceless [p] of jump (cf.jumped), as [d] after the voiced [l]
of repel (cf. repelled), and as [ ed] afterthe voiceless [t] of root or the
voiced [d] of wed (cf. rooted and wedded).We can also call these morphs
allomorphs or variants. The appearanceof one morph over another in this case is
determined by voicing and the place of articulation of the final consonant of
the verb stem.
C.
According to
Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
Many morphemes have two or more different pronunciations,
calledallomorphs, the choice between them being determined by the context.These
include some of the commonest morphemes in the language, as Iwill illustrate
directly. I will then discuss in more detail what aspects of the context can
influence the choice of allomorph. How are the plurals of most English nouns
formed? For Example: If one comparescats, dogs and horses with cat, dog and horse respectively, the obvious
answeris: ‘by adding -s’.Allomorphy,
concerned as it is with differences in how a morpheme is pronounced, may seem
at first to have little connection with meaning.
3.
Please explain
about phonological conditioning allomorphs and morphological conditioning
allomorphs!
A.
According to
Francis Katamba
A morpheme has several allomorphs, the choice of allomorph used in
a given context is normally phonologically conditioned. This means that
the allomorph selected to represent the morpheme in a particular context is one
whose phonological properties are similar to those of sounds found in a
neighbouring allomorph of some other morpheme. The phonological resemblance
between the nasal in the prefix and the first consonant representing the
morpheme before which it is placed is due to assimilation. The pronunciation of
the nasal in the prefix is adjusted to match the place of articulation of the
first consonant representing the next morpheme. Thus, in [2.12] the labial
consonant [m] occurs in [rm] before a labial consonant, the alveolar consonant
[n] in [rn] occurs before alveolar consonants and the velar consonant [g] in
[rg] occurs before velar consonants. In each case the two consonants end up
sharing the same place of articulation. This example also illustrates another
point, namely that spelling is a very poor guide to pronunciation in English
(and many other languages). Where the point at issue would otherwise be
obscured by the standar? orthography, phonetic or phonemic transcription will
be used as appropnate in this book. In the light of this discussion, let us
return to the earlier example of the allomorphs of the English regular past
tense morpheme in.
Clearly, the distribution of allomorphs is phonologically
conditioned: /Id/ is chosen after the alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ (with hi being
inserted to separate the alveolar stop of the suffix from the final alveolar
stop of the verb to which it is attached); voiced /-d/ is chosen after voiced
segments other than /d/ and voiceless /-t/ is chosen after voiceless consonants
other than /t/. So far, all the examples of morphs that we have seen have
involved only vowels and consonants. But, morphemes may also be signalled by
tone.
Conclusion, In the case
of the /s/, /z/, and / z/ allomorphs of the plural morphemes in cats, dogs, and
judges, the /s/ occurs after a /t/, the /z/ after a /g/, and the / z/ after a
/j/. When the distribution of the various allomorphs can be stated in terms of
their phonemic environments, the allomorphs are said to be phonologically
conditioned. We can economically explain the distribution of the allomorphs of
not only the English "plural" but also the English
"possessive" (cat's) and the verb "third person" (takes)
morphemes at the same time.
In general, these allomorphs are all phonologically conditioned in
addition to being homophones. The usual allomorphs of the "English
plural", "possessive", and "third person" morphemes
are / z/, which occurs after /ssczj/ (or after sibilants), /s/, which occurs
after the remaining voiceless consonants, and /z/, which occurs elsewhere. When
the "plural" morpheme is added to church /c rc/, the result is /c rc
z/, when the possessive morpheme is added to snake /sneyk/, the result is
/sneyks/, and when the third person morpheme is added to beg /beg/, the result
is /begz/. In another pattern of phonological conditioning the usual allomorphs
of the English "past tense" and "past participle" morphemes
which occur with verbs, for example in baked, are / d/, which occurs after
/td/, /t/ which occurs after the remaining voiceless consonants, and /d/, which
occurs elsewhere. Phonological conditioning appears to be the most general and
productive kind of conditioning of morphemic variants in languages.
Morphological conditioning
allomorphs is the next section introduced the segmentation of words into the
smallest abstract units of meaning or grammatical function. These units are
called morphemes. We saw that the analysis of words into morphemes begins with
the contrasting of pairs of utterances which are partially different in sound
and meaning. Word-forms are segmented into morphs, which are recurrent physical
word-forming chunks. Any morphs that represent the same meaning are grouped
together as allomorphs of that morpheme. Meaning plays a role in this, but the
main principle used is that of distribution.
Morphs are listed as allomorphs of the same morpheme if they are in
complementary distribution, if they are realisations of the same morpheme in
different contexts. (Sometimes a morpheme has a single allomorph.) Normally,
the distribution of allomorphs is phonologically conditioned. The relationship
between allomorphs has a phonetic motivation. A single underlying (base) form
is postulated and the phonetic representation of the various allomorphs is
derived from it using phonological rules. But sometimes allomorphs may be
grammatically conditioned or even lexically conditioned, a particular allomorph
is selected if either a particular grammatical element or a particular word is
present.
Occasionally there is suppletion, which means that an allomorph
bears no phonetic similarity to other allomorphs of the same morpheme. The last
section dealt with the relationship between morphological and phonological
representations. It was established that the relationship between morphemes on
the one hand and morphs on the other, is one of representation (or realisation)
rather than composition. The alternation in question is not the idiosyncratic
property of anyone morpheme but rather a general phonological process in the
language. The terms morphophonemics (in American linguistics) and
morphophonology (European linguistics) are used to refer to rules of this kind
that account for the realisation of phonologically conditioned allomorphs of
morphemes. For Example, kind-er
and the noun-forming suffix -er
as inworker, which is formed
from the verb work, or it can
be a part of a word without a discernible meaning of its own, as in water.
Clearly, it is the morphs rather than morphemes that are made up of
(sequences of) phonemes.Conclusion,In pairs such as man-men,
child-children, and deer-deer, in which the second item can be said to contain
the "plural" morpheme, we cannot state the variation, if any, between
the two forms in terms of phonetic environment. Instead we must refer to the
morphemes "man", "child" and "deer", or
alternatively, to their phonemic shapes (/man/, /cayld/ and /dir/), and specify
the allomorph of the "plural" morpheme separately for each. This kind
of variation among allomorphs is called morphological conditioning. The
morphologically conditioned allomorphs are regarded as irregular in contrast
with the phonologically conditioned allomorphs, which are regarded as regular.
Men, children and deer are therefore irregular English plurals, just as are
alumni, criteria, mice, women, oxen, and strata. The "past tense"
morpheme also has its irregular allomorphs, as in drank, brought, swam, was,
had, put, took, fled, built and so on; likewise, the past participle morpheme
has irregular allomorphs, as in drunk, brought, swum, been, broken, stood, put
and so on.
